


Lay Me Down

by LaurenElizabeth



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:00:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4686263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurenElizabeth/pseuds/LaurenElizabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how Steve Rogers lost, then found, and lost then found Bucky Barnes. And himself.</p><p>Slow-build.</p><p> </p><p>A WIP that needed the motivation of being subject to the public and therefore potentially accountable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Me Down

The first time that they took Steve on a proper tour of S.H.I.E.L.D facilities wasn’t until about three months after his first rapid glances as he searched for exits from the New York branch. Those three months were filled with what S.H.I.E.L.D called ‘acclimation therapy’ which included classes about how the world had changed since he had gone under, that were followed by actual therapy where he was asked to talk himself through the differences between New York in the 1930s and 1940s, and New York today, to try and abate any culture shock. S.H.I.E.L.D was very eager for Steve to adjust as quickly as possible, and while Steve was appreciative of the crash course in the 21st century, he was also concerned with what S.H.I.E.L.D would want in return for the time and effort they were investing to get him up to speed.

After his therapists deemed him appropriately acclimatized, it was no shock to Steve when he was asked to join S.H.I.E.L.D on an “as needed” basis, but he was a little surprised when they decided his field promotion to ‘Captain’ wasn’t going to cut it as sufficient field experience. They let him keep the title, but S.H.I.E.L.D asked that he continue his training by attending their Academy of Operations, which Steve agreed to since he could easily admit to himself that despite the acclimation therapy, he would still be a bit lost without directions on how to navigate this new world. It didn’t help that Steve was mentally only three months removed from an active special ops commission; he really hadn’t lost any of the hyperawareness from the battlefield in the time he had been back, and that made him was eager to regain purpose for all that excess focus. Not to mention his unfulfilled ‘saving people thing’, which according to his therapist might be both a personality trait and a projection of his own desire to be saved from his own feelings of helplessness. Steve wasn’t too sure about that assessment but he was certainly feeling pretty useless just sitting around ‘recovering’ while there were people he could be helping. Retraining and going out on new ops seemed like just the thing he needed to distract him from… well, from a lot of things actually.

When Steve first walked into the Academy of Operations, he was floored at the number of students just milling about the entrance hall. Or at least he was until he realized they were all subtly looking his way or gesturing towards him. Obviously someone had shared the news that he was visiting today, he mused. His tour guides, several of the instructors at the Academy, were pointing out some of the grander aspects of the Academy’s history as they weaved their way towards what seemed to be some type of memorial with many names listed, from what Steve could see of it through all the students.

“And this is our Wall of Valor with the names listed of the agents who sacrificed their lives in the line of duty,” said one of the men leading the group.

Steve looked at the wall briefly but then continued to look at the different groups of students around him until his attention was brought back to the wall.

“Captain Rogers you might be interested to see the first name listed,” said one of the female instructors with a slightly smug expression, almost as if she was proud she was the one who pointed it out to him first.

Steve looked more closely, and felt his heart drop into his stomach.

“We of course know you weren’t formally agents of the S.S.R., and that James Barnes…”

“His name was Bucky,” Steve interjected hoarsely.

The woman who had pointed Buck’s name on the wall to him was now looking shaken, Steve must have sounded worse than he thought, as she continued, “Yes of course. Well… we know, ‘Bucky’ Barnes was an enlisted man, but both James’, I mean Bucky’s, and your close connections with Peggy Carter and Howard Stark, founders of S.H.I.E.L.D, induced them to honor their fallen friend,” she said hastily.

Steve was lost staring at Bucky’s name engraved on the wall. The Wall of Valor that honored dead agents. Bucky’s name at the beginning of a list of the dead, a list of the Reaper’s S.H.I.E.L.D conquests. James Buchanan Barnes first on that list. Steve’s hand stretched out, he could see it in his mind’s eye, the metal groaning …

“Captain Rogers?” asked the woman, as if she had been trying to get his attention.

“Huh yes, sorry,” Steve shook his head and coughed a bit to clear his throat. Looking around quickly to regain some sense of his surroundings, he quickly recalled his audience. Putting on his best stage voice, Steve spoke up, “Well ma’am I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I’m sure glad Bucky has been recognized for everything he did in our unit.”

The woman smiled hesitatingly, and then from a distance Steve heard someone begin clapping until, slowly, the whole entrance was filled with a rather somber bout of applause that echoed in Steve’s ears. Steve nodded and waved, saving face even as he could physically feel his heart beating in his stomach and a crumpling sensation about where his heart should have been.

As the applause died down, the students began dispersing, which Steve took as a sign that everyone had been waiting around to gauge his reaction to Bucky’s name on the memorial, which made him glad he had controlled his reaction. Shortly thereafter, the tour regained its course, and another male instructor directed them toward the strategic coursework wing of the Academy. Steve followed the tour leaders with nary a glance backwards at Buck’s name on that list, a list of the dead, his name as the first dead agent...

Steve had only lost his best friend in this world three months ago. Three months ago, for all the good Dr. Erskine’s serum had done his body; his arm had been 6 inches away from saving Bucky. 6 inches more and Steve might not have ever seen what ‘the end of the line’ actually meant. It made him sick, sick at his core to realize the grotesque irony of Bucky falling from a train becoming the “end of the line” of their friendship. His grief was profound, but Steve kept it to himself. S.H.I.E.L.D was aware enough of his new circumstances to decide to train him for existing in this new world, but Steve could hardly care what a computer worked or how the US felt about Germany and Russia now when he was stuck on his ruminations about what his life is now without Bucky… or Peggy… or any of the Commandos. This new world was just as dull at the one he had left behind when put the plane down because they both lacked one James Buchanan Barnes. But S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t know that, and Steve is keen on keeping it that way.

It had been a blessing to realize S.H.I.E.L.D was so wrapped up in their own agenda about him, focused on what Steve needed to gain to exist in this century, that they overlooked what it meant for Steve to come out of the plane, when he had put it down with no intention to survive. Steve was emotionally aware enough to know he hadn’t been thinking entirely rationally when he made the decision to put the plane down. Obviously in hindsight there were other ways he could have dealt with the threat the bombs presented, but at that time, Steve was too raw still from losing Bucky. That little guy from Brooklyn had lost the one person that kept him grounded, who reminded him to have a sense of self-preservation. Without Bucky Steve didn’t know how to be mindful of protecting himself. Steve knew he was in a bad place then: he also knew he wasn’t recovered enough to begin to find a sense of self-preservation because he was still too eager to throw himself into the next fight to distract himself from the pain. Distraction was Steve’s favorite coping mechanism, distraction, and deflection.

He had seen a poster once in a London base that had had a phrase on it “Keep Calm and Carry On”, which Peggy explained was somewhat of both an unspoken national slogan and a joke to boost civilian morale, even if, as Steve learned after seeing a couple iterations of the phrase on posters in a mall, it never really made it out to the public eye. It was something Steve found relatable in a way he could never quite pin down, but now he could see it was a type of affirmation of how he’d lived his whole life, the calm part might be a bit exaggerated sure, but the rest held true. There were some very rapid adjustments in Steve’s life from sickly, but scrappy little guy, to failed experiment, to show pony, to actual leader in a full-stop war, which had all taken their toll on Steve, but throughout it all he Kept Calm and Carried On. Except all that calm was a front to conceal the roiling guilt that had been building in his heart since he was a child. Steve felt guilty he was sick, guilt for not being able to work as hard as the other boys, and guilty that his mother bore the brunt of all his illnesses since his mother had to nurse him and pay for medicine so often. Then came the guilt he felt at being the only successful product of Project: Rebirth and all that history of guilt alongside this new guilt weighed on his mind, shaping Steve to make him a relentlessly composed soldier that could be prepared for his next task as soon as he had finished the last, always trying to make sure he wouldn’t fail the expectations Dr. Erskine and all the others at the S.S.R had had of Project: Rebirth. He had almost lapsed into some type of robotic efficiency that had allowed him to separate himself from any mental ramifications so he could fully focus on the next job. But all those years of deflection and guilt were coming to roost now that Steve had lost the constant stream of tasks he had been given during the war. However, all of that hardly fazed him and what ultimately was most damning to Steve’s composure was and continues to be losing Bucky.

Bucky was, and always had been, an anchor for Steve. Even when things were at their worst when Steve’s Ma had died, Buck had been there with an arm around Steve’s shoulders, and an offer for them to get a place together because Bucky and Steve were friends ‘ ‘Til the end of the line, pal’. Bucky had been at Steve’s side since before he could remember. He had been there for Steve through three bouts of pneumonia, rheumatic fever, and a host of all of Steve’s other health issues before the serum; Bucky had been at Steve’s back when Steve got himself into fights he couldn’t finish and supportive despite the fact Steve was the instigator almost every time. The longest time Steve and Bucky had ever been apart had been when Bucky had shipped off, and Steve was in Basic. Before that, they had spent their lives in each other’s pockets from age 6 until Steve lost Bucky off that train in the Alps. Almost 20 years of being together. It was longer than lots of folks stayed married in this new millennium.

Steve didn’t know how to live in a world without Bucky Barnes in it. He had lost an integral part of himself when Bucky fell. And Steve didn’t know how to be himself without it. Bucky’s loss was like a festering wound on Steve’s soul, but had been grievously fresh during those weeks before he put the plane down. Not even Agent Carter had been able to help him start to grieve, to help him start healing. That had shaken Steve even more that he could say because even in the haze of his grief he knew that, if he actually had loved her, she should have been able to help him. But all that Agent Carter’s failed attempts to help did was demonstrate to Steve just how superficial his feelings for her were. If he had felt something more deeply for her, beyond what he now recognized as an appreciation of her abilities, and gratitude for her recognition of his worth as a person before the serum, maybe she could have helped him in those dark weeks. Instead, the grief Steve felt in the wake of Bucky’s loss eclipsed absolutely everything else except for the burning need to avenge Bucky’s death. Steve still couldn’t bear to think about what that implied about how he cared bout Bucky.

With just the brief look at Bucky’s name on the Wall of Valor, all of the riotous emotions from those early days of mourning violently returned to the forefront of his mind. Steve’s emotions were no less raw than the day he had lost Bucky, but he had gained enough time after the event to be able to formulate a way to hide how he was still feeling. They may say time heals all wounds but Steve had learned that time didn’t heal as much as the phrase implied. Steve had discovered through losing his mother and, even more so with losing Bucky, that wounds like that didn’t heal, they scarred.

After the tour was over, and Steve struggled to remember how the tour had even proceeded, Steve made his way through the halls of the Academy toward the quarters he’d been assigned. Steve opened the door to his room and sat heavily on the bed. He just couldn’t stop thinking about what Bucky would make of all of this, of not only the new century but of his name being along all those other fancy government agents. With a stabbing awareness, Steve realized that if they had gone to the trouble of honoring Bucky on the Wall of Valor, then they had likely arranged a grave for him in Arlington. Just the thought of confronting a gravesite, even though Steve knew Bucky’s body was still somewhere in Italy, was the final straw, and Steve lost his tenuous grip on the grief he had been holding back. With silent, keening sobs, Steve cried in his quarters thinking of Bucky. There were no hitching, tearful cries but instead it was the type of sobbing that leaves your chest painfully expanding and contracting from the force of how sound was trapped in your lungs. He hated it, he felt like a wounded animal. Such was the intensity of the pain in his chest, that Steve felt like he was having one of his asthma attacks as he tried to breathe through the grief he couldn’t contain any longer.

Bucky Barnes had been bigger than life in tiny Steve Roger’s world, and had maintained that place in Steve’s mind even as his body grew. And now, Steve thought despondently, now his best friend in the world was reduced to a name on a wall and an empty grave. It literally tore into Steve, and broke him apart. For several hours, alone in his quarters, Steve dwelled on how empty he felt without Bucky in his life, and grieved his friend. Finally, exhaustion overwhelmed his grief and Steve fell into a fitful sleep.


End file.
